Some Incendiary Ideas

[Daft Loon]

Increased AOE radius
-Won't effect the gatling or carronades and only slightly buff the flamer so it won't risk overshooting from useless to OP on some guns.
-Mainly buffs hades and banshee
-Might be too good on mines, would be limited to +50% max by the range of incendiary mines (115.5m) much more would guarantee self hits

Adjusting gatling rate of fire or the number of buckshots in the carronades and the minotaur while keeping damage constant.
-Affects these weapons individually so can (re)balance them without touching the others.
-Making incendiary minotaur work well this way would be a fair buff to it
-Limited by visuals ex dropping the gatling's magazine to 60 would be fine but 40 would start to look weird

Splitting the primary and secondary ignition chances
-Buffing whichever it is the flamer lacks makes it better on everything else without being too good on the flamer

[BlackenedPies]

An ammo should reflect the description and not have hidden or special effects on specific guns. Visual effects can be an exception but that requires Muse work.

Increased aoe would have a small effect on hades and banshee as with burst. It would mostly affect larger aoe guns like hwatcha and mine launcher. The mine would be too powerful with incendiary and it's already great. We should avoid buffing the mine launcher, although the below proposal is a mine buff.

Increasing the secondary damage fire chance would be a bigger buff to guns (except flame) than a higher primary chance. For example +10% primary +30% secondary fire chance. Incendiary can afford to be good on the flamethrower but I'd put a max limit of 10% more potent than greased.

Separating fire chance is a neat idea that I like, but it needs a supplement. I'm convinced that the simplest and balanced way is to change the rof reduction from -30% to -10 or 15%. The low dps makes incendiary unusable on most guns and this would make it work on those with potential, and good on those that it already works on. Examples of potential are gat, lumber, hades, taur, and hflak.

[Daft Loon]

To clarify my second point the idea is to change the gun itself in a way that only matters when using incendiary rather than having the change apply when using incendiary. ex. changing the minotaur from 5 buckshots to 10 retaining the current total damage, with most ammo types the only effect would be to make the scatter average out more smoothly but it would double the fire starting of incendiary. (A change i think would be good although it may be set to only 5 buckshots to limit the need to calculate push forces for 10,20 etc shots)

A possible set of changes:
Remove rate of fire penalty.
Split ignition chance +15% primary, +25% secondary. (Assuming the flamethrower counts its 1 damage type as primary)

                            Ignition Rate              Fires Per Clip               %Time Firing       Range
Normal Flamer        3.67                         55                              53.8                   200m

Lesmok Flamer       3.67                         38.5                           63.6                   340m

Greased Flamer      5.87                         66                              65.2                   160m

New Inc. Flamer      6.17                         69                              65.2                   140m

New Inc. Gatling    3.33                          24.6                            59.6                   315m

New Inc. L.Carro.   6.4                           25.6                            40                      227m

The flamethrower is slighly underrated by those figures because a shot can sometimes ignite more than 1 component.
Assuming the 5 stacks from mines count as secondary it would be a slight buff to mines.

[BlackenedPies]

While it would be good for the taur, doubling buckshot count could be too strong on carro which is already good. I'm worried about the description because all effects must be listed. Flame damage is primary and mine fire chance is secondary.

[Daft Loon]

While it would be good for the taur, doubling buckshot count could be too strong on carro which is already good.

To clarify my failure at clarification - The idea is a change like the jitter reduction on the hwacha, it was done for the heavy clip hwacha combo but the change was made to the gun itself. In this case there would be no side effects since only incendiary uses number of hits directly.

[BlackenedPies]

I see, it's clear that you're discussing changing the gun rather than incendiary: specifically gat and Minotaur. I don't foresee problems from these changes and it's simple to do. Muse might not want to change the gat but the Minotaur is a good change that would slightly buff it.

[Extirminator]

I already proposed a larger amount of buckshots for the minotaur for those exact reason a few weeks ago, don't know if that progressed anywhere.

[BlackenedPies]

Adding Minotaur buckshot would be a buff but I don't see it making incendiary useful. The decreased projectile speed means higher relative jitter, low clip gives only 3 shots, and there's a ROF penalty. 10 buckshots with 3 shots and 40% fire chance means 12 fires per clip. Because the taur doesn't have arm time and relies on the push effect, incendiary doesn't seem worth it without a very high buckshot count.

[Extirminator]

I was going with about 7 stacks on average per shot, so is to make it viable. so something like 18-20 like the Heavy Carronade's buckshots amount would be nice. So that you could reach a cap of 20 usually with those 3 shots.
Also, the projectile speed does not affect max spread from jitter. Lesmok gatling and incendiary gatling when both checked at 300m of range will both show the same max spread induced by the jitter. Lesmok will just get that spread faster.

[Mr.Bando]

i would have the ammo completely changed to primary and secondary damage types to both fire damage. But what's wrong with incendiary currently?

[Kamoba]

i would have the ammo completely changed to primary and secondary damage types to both fire damage. But what's wrong with incendiary currently?

Its mostly outclassed by other ammo types and is one of the poorer choices in terms of efficiency, holding only a niche for use against people who would struggle with fire management

[Daft Loon]

i would have the ammo completely changed to primary and secondary damage types to both fire damage.

That would be somewhat problematic to balance with the way the damage types are currently, a fire damage hwacha at 75% clip size would do 840 armor damage (galleon = 800) and 1500 balloon damage (balloons = 1200) so it would need about -50% damage from somewhere at least.

[BlackenedPies]

The problem with incendiary is the combo of -25% clip and -30% ROF causing very low dps. The simplest solution is tweaking these variables.

Turning damage into fire would make carronades unstoppable hull killers. Flechette and shatter weapons have naturally high damage and changing to fire damage would make all guns unbalanced.

[Mr.Bando]

So you want to be able to ignite fires with shooting, but not do such a good job at it where it can replace the flamer? I think the problem with incendiary is in its design not as ammunition that is made for DPS, but as the niche in causing disruption and pressure onto the opponent engineer to reduce their repair effectiveness.

Increase the time to live for the projectile but keep the reduced projectile speed to keep a net zero gain/loss on range? I ponder why there needs to be reduced ammo when using incendiary. Most guns don't carry all that much shots before requiring reload but then further reduced and unable to sustain the incendiary ammo attacks make this makes this ammo choice quite poor for long range or overshadowed by the flamer in short range. Reduce damage per shot but increase maximum magazine size so there is no increase or decreased damage potential per magazine. That may work.

Daft loon suggested giving it an AOE ignite to make it better at causing fires on guns at long range. Not a bad idea if increased AOE makes it easier to cause more things to burst into flames.